Climate talks risk failure unless they accelerate: U.N.

Alister Doyle, Reuters 14 Aug 09;

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - U.N. talks on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in December risk failure unless negotiations accelerate, a senior U.N. official said on Friday after a sluggish week-long session involving 180 countries.

Many nations also bemoaned scant progress at the Aug 10-14 talks that failed to break deadlocks on issues such as sharing out curbs on greenhouse gases among rich and poor, and raising funds to help developing nations cope with global warming.

"If we continue at this rate we're not going to make it," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference after the meeting in Bonn.

He said "selective progress" has been made toward trimming a huge 200-page draft treaty text in Bonn, one of a series of talks meant to end with a U.N. deal in Copenhagen in December.

He warned participants that just 15 days of negotiations remain before Copenhagen -- at meetings in Bangkok in September-October and Barcelona in November.

"It is clear that there is quite a significant uphill battle if we are going to get there," said Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation. But he said there were some signs of movement. "You absolutely can get there," he said.

Developing nations accused the rich of failing to take the lead in setting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and of trying to get the poor to shoulder more of the burden of emission curbs without providing aid and technology.

"We still have the same problems that have been hindering us," China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters. He said that China was keen to see its emissions peak but that fighting poverty had to remain an overriding priority.

China and India want the rich to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change such as floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

ISLAND STATES WANT MORE

Small island states and least developed nations, 80 in all, teamed up to call for deeper cuts, of at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, to keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

"Copenhagen is the last chance to avoid a global human tragedy," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, who chairs the alliance of small island states. Many are at risk from stronger cyclones and rising seas.

She said cuts promised by industrialized nations so far totaled just 10 to 16 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and would mean a world temperature rise of 3 Celsius. "Such a path would be catastrophic for all countries," she said.

The European Union, which has offered some of the deepest cuts, also criticized average offers by developed nations.

"They are gravely insufficient," said Anders Turesson, the chief negotiator of Sweden which holds the EU presidency. He also said that developing nations had to show "more engagement."

Major emitters agreed at a summit in Italy last month to try to limit global warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Many delegates said that a meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York and a meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh, both in September, could help.

"Delegates are kept back by political gridlock. The political leaders must now unblock the process," said Kim Carstensen, head of the WWF environmental group's global climate initiative.

Greenpeace also criticized a lack of promised leadership at the talks by nations like the United States, Germany and France.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

Gloomy Negotiators End Bonn Climate Talks
Paul Voosen, The New York Times 14 Aug 09;

The latest round of preparatory talks for the U.N. climate conference concluded today with negotiators lamenting that the languid pace of talks could mean there won't be a deal on emissions in Copenhagen this December.

"It would be incomprehensible if this opportunity were lost," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. For any hope of a deal, he said, "the speed of the negotiations must be considerably accelerated at the [next] meeting in Bangkok."

The United States' lead climate negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, added to the warnings.

"If we don't have more movement and more consensus than we saw here, we won't have an agreement," Pershing said.

Though the problems were many, there were also glimmers of hope in the current round, such as a collective agreement on what should be done, said Anders Turesson, Sweden's lead climate negotiator and chairman of the E.U. working group.

"What we're talking about is a profound change of industrial civilization," Turesson said. "It would be surprising if there weren't stumbling blocks."

The negotiators were wrapping up a week of talks in Bonn, Germany, aimed at narrowing the number of options in the 200-page main negotiating document. This text, which will serve as the basis for negotiations for the successor to 1997's Kyoto Protocol, is currently inundated with some 2,000 bracketed statements highlighting areas of disagreement.

"We seem to be afloat on a sea of brackets," de Boer said. The document has not been significantly slimmed down in the week's discussions.

Much debate hinges on whether the U.S. Senate will pass climate legislation this fall. Pershing made it clear that the United States will use whatever domestic legislation it passes as the basis for its carbon reduction agreements.

"Our focus is not to repeat Kyoto," Pershing said, recalling the climate treaty that the United States helped negotiate but the Senate did not ratify.

The rosiest interpretations of the House's recently passed climate bill would see U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropping by up to 13 percent from 1990 levels, de Boer said, well below commitments made by the European Union to reduce its emissions by 20 percent.

In the end, Europeans want to be on comparative terms with the Americans, Turesson said. How that will be accomplished is unclear, given the domestic limits the United States faces.

The U.S. position is that the agreement that will emerge, rather than mandating a single percentage cut that will be met by every wealthy nation, "is something [that will be] conceived country by country," Pershing said.

From developing nations, the United States is seeking not legally binding targets but legally binding actions, Pershing said. One such example would be a quantified commitment from Brazil on how it will tackle deforestation.

Developing nations have been seeking financing from developed countries if they are to limit their emissions and adapt to climate change. So far, there has not been one proposal from developed nations that would raise more than $10 billion a year for such funding, negotiators said.

Meanwhile, the commitments currently on the table from industrial countries will only reduce emissions between 10 and 16 percent from 1990 levels, according to Dessima Williams, the permanent representative of Grenada to the United Nations and chairwoman of the Alliance of Small Island States.

Unless changed, these pledges will lead to temperature change of more than 3 degrees Celsius, Williams said.

Such a temperature increase is well above the goal agreed to by the world's wealthiest nations at the Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, Italy, last month. There, countries including the United States, Canada and Russia agreed to cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified a 25 percent to 40 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels as necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change: heat waves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

More than 2,000 representatives met in Bonn this week. The consultation, which was characterized as "informal," is the latest in a series of meetings leading up to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen this December. Further meetings will takeplace in Bangkok in late September and Barcelona, Spain, in November.

Comment: Australian carbon defeat is bad news for Copenhagen summit
The failure to pass new climate change legislation in Australia does not bode well for a global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the end of the year in Copenhagen.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 13 Aug 09;

If Australia cannot agree, how will more than 90 countries with opposing views possibly thrash out an agreement to tackle climate change?

It was thought Australia was ready to follow Europe in committing to cut carbon. The country has more first-hand experience than most of the impact of climate change through its recent droughts and bush fires; Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, has overturned his predecessor's objections to signing up to the Kyoto Protocol and the Green Party is popular.

But Australia also is reliant on coal to run its economy, and it has some of the world's most outspoken climate change sceptics.

Ian Plimer, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University and author of a recent book Heaven and Earth, has controversially questioned whether climate change is man made. His book was refused by many publishers but has since gone on to sell tens of thousands of copies in Australia. Its author has been lobbying politicians and appearing regularly on television.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December will need rich countries such as Australia to introduce climate change legislation to prove they are serious about cutting carbon. Otherwise developing countries like India and China, that are predicted to produce more carbon in the future, will refuse to cut their own emissions.

All eyes are now on the US where President Barack Obama has a similarly tough job getting through his own legislation. He wants to introduce a carbon trading scheme in the most oil-hungry country in the world.